Electoral college is fucking weird

That you disallow prisoners to vote, but a felon can run as a candidate

That you end up in situation where there are hours long lines and you don’t have one station per, say, 1000 people at most

Registering to vote is weird, but that is i understand mostly a consequence of not having countrywide ID standard. In my country you’re automatically registered where you live, and IDs are free of charge and mandatory to have (not driving license or passport. there are fees for these)

Election isn’t on weekend, there’s zero reason why it couldn’t be or it could be made national holiday. There was even free public transit for election day in my city, but that one was paid by the city

That some of people (republicans) seem to be into politics in the same way ultras seem to be into football, it’s still fucked up but i’ve seen it in other places so it’s not that weird by now

this is less of a problem when you don’t use it for energy, but instead as a feedstock like in synthesis of ammonia or steelmaking. you can make ammonia in many places, but it’s not the case for steel

you’re probably talking about direct reduced iron and it’s really a problem that can be dealt with easily, just chuck a piece of coke when it’s molten for the second time in electric arc furnace (and maybe electrodes introduce enough carbon). substituting coke with hydrogen works also on “ingredient step” if you mean by that fuel needed to reduce iron ore to iron

maybe there’s a way to make electrowinning iron economical, and it’d be pretty green too, but i don’t know if it is workable

e: you can also avoid need for met coal if you use methane or syngas for direct reduced iron process

no we can’t make hydrogen everywhere, there will be regions with large excess of renewable energy compared to population. these places could export hydrogen. you also don’t need a lot of transport if crude is extracted near place where it’s used, like for example heavy crude from alberta

coal can be substituted to some degree with processes like direct reduction. hydrogen works but syngas from biomass or trash also works

file styrofoam under plastics

not now, but if hydrogen were to be used as an energy source/storage, then it’d be used plenty. same with batteries

this story was out almost a month ago https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/16/russia-suspected-of-planting-device-on-plane-that-caused-uk-warehouse-fire

We did it not because it was easy, but because we thought it will be easy

ikr, but that tweet implies that all of oil/gas/coal ships would be unnecessary

this is arguably fine, because this way ships make clouds of sulfate aerosols, which have slight cooling effect and no one is bothered by it when it’s released over sea

Some of these ships would carry green hydrogen and new lithium batteries and old lithium batteries (to be recycled) and whatnot. Also at least some oil would be still needed for fine chemicals like meds or (idk what’s proper english term for that) large scale organic synthesis like plastics, or even straight distillates like hexane (for edible oil extraction) or lubricants. Some of usual non-energy uses of oil can be easily substituted with enough energy like with nitrogen fertilizers but some can’t

“a major pay-for-win garbage science laundromat” you mean

where are brain worms when you need them to finish the job

societies in turmoil find it easier to acquire both lunatics and explosives

i’d just want to notice it’s much easier when you can just pick them up from field and melt them in a kettle

That’s nine dead by now

better source https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/1/five-children-among-seven-killed-in-attack-on-pakistan-polio-vaccine-drive

you’re overthinking it. yesterday an alleged draft text of ceasefire deal between israel and lebanon was doing rounds on twitter and telegram

they are protected by geography in that sense that any long range attack is a bespoke affair, uses rare and costly weapons and requires coordination of many assets. considering its value it could be expected that there are some GBAD nearby, and long distance makes it more likely for drones to be shot down by russian jets, like it’s done more commonly in western doctrine. i think it’s probable that long range strikes are only conducted when ukrainians have intelligence about weakened air defences

they are protected by geography

iirc somewhere in the city there is a factory that for some time was the only manufacturer of RDX in entire russia, and under direct control of FSB. it could be the same plant, but i’m not sure about it

another juicy target nearby is Motovilikha plant

higher voltage at the same power would actually make it more compact